Glutton For Punishment
by NeonZangetsu
Summary: That which has been lost shall not be returned. The heart cannot heal; there is too bad much blood between them. Promises are left broken or forgotten. Bonds are reneged and forged anew. Love is made; then destroyed in gluttony. Naruto x Jewelry Bonney.


**_A/N: Bad news guys and gals. In addition to my new job, I am also starting classes again tomorrow. Uck! It will eat up a lot of my morning and most of my afternoon, unfotunately. I won't have as much time to update as I'd like now, but I will strive to do my utmost to get your favorite chapters out for your favorite stories, that much I can promise! Oh well, at least I'll still have the weekends to myself!_**

**_The Prodigal Son_**

That which has been lost shall not be returned. The land cannot heal; there is simply too much bad blood between them. Promises are left broken, or forgotten. Bonds are reneged upon or forged anew; contracts are bound, their founder's ideals. Stooped in centuries of hate and malevolence, loathing society, despising humanity. Aspiring towards the complete and utter eradication of the endless pirates that have plagued mankind; replaced by a peace so tenuous that it could not truly be called peace at all.

Eventually, an organization was founded on such abhorent ideals.

_The World Government._

Long have they wrought their heinous deeds with iutter mpunity. Long have they meted out their "justice" belaboring upon the common man their misbegotten ideals, while they themselves permit the most abrasive of all crimes: the sin of slavery. They secretly "sanction" this practice, because the Tenryubito, those of the World Nobles, view all humanity to be beneath them, to be less than them, to be less than trash.

Save for one.

This one, this man, had forsaken that title. He had abandoned it, cast his heritage aside, and for what? Perhaps he didn't know. Perhaps it was the Devil's Fruit that had been forced upon him in his youngers years, now, honed to maturity. His was a dreadful power. A silent killer. So efficient so deadly even those of the Logia attribute had reason to fear it; to fear him. That was how the world worked. They always feared the unknown; that which they did not know, what they did not care to know.

Now, their fears had become their own worst nightmare. And it had come to kill them all.

It stalked forward, shroudded in the night and matte-black cloak, and pounced upon its first victim.

"W-Why are you doing this!" A man cried out! "Why are you betra-_**argh!"**_

His voice trickled away into a strangle gurgle, and then he was gone. Thin rivulets of blood streamed from his eyes, nose and mouth, splattering across the face of his killer. With a gruesome precision, he removed a taut wrist from within the noble's jugular, penetrating the air preserving bubble that had once enclosed it. With a grace that defied logic and sanity, he lowered the now dying man to the ground, reveling, even as the life leached from his eyes.

His would be a bad death.

"Why?" He asked softly, his voice raw with a sudden fit of hysterics. "Why, that is neither here nor there, my good man!" Cackling madly, he stomped past him, his boot crushing the already rotten skull from within. He peered down at it for a moment longer, exposing deep, sapphire eyes from within the hooded cowl. For a moment he seemed melancholy but only for a moment; because a wide, toothy grin split across his face.

"It's part of the plan you see!" He explained to the broken skull beneath his boot. When it did not answer, he snarled his heel lashing out, kicking it roughly across the hall. Oddly enough, the sight of this sent the man into yet another hysterical fit of laughter. It was a terrible dreadful sound. It was the laughter of a man who'd lost everything, a man gone utterly mad.

"It's all part of the plan." He murmurred to himself, still giggling softly. "All part of the plan."

He was a handsome fellow, if intense. His blond hair was disheveled, his blue eyes intelligent, his features balanced. Whisker marks tripled each cheek, cheeks that had once dimpled with a constantly bright and enthused grin; no matter the situation or mission. Now, he was intense. His face had hardened, his visage freed of the baby fat that had plagued him in his younger years, wrought like cast iron.

"There he is!" The harsh _thud-thud-thud_ of the guards footsteps alerted him to their prescence. e jerked upright, exposed now to the searchlights. He grinned a sidesplitting grin and then it was gone, lost in the shadows once more as he rose from his crouch; bringing himself to his full and commanding height. For a moment the guards paused before this derranged specter; this maddened murderer of a man.

"He'd murdered Saint Roswald!" One of them shouted. "Saint Charloss-sama, please stay back!"

At the mention of another World Noble, the man twitched.

"Why so serious, boys?" He asked in a voice like liquid, deadly soft, the smile dripping from his face like water. Before they could answer, he flung back his hood and exposed his face to the world, shocking all those present. This was the face of one of their own; the face of a Tenryubito. But something was wrong with it. Terribly, terribly wrong. In the second that it took for them to register it, their lives were rendered forfeit.

"I said_...Why. So. Serious?"_

Chiseled and nigh but expressionless, that face bore a series of angry red lines from left ear to right, drooping down his chin and neck and lips, which pursed now into a scowl as he flung a hand forward, two fingers jutting prominently outward. For a moment, nothing happened. Then someone screamed, and the silence shattered like so much broken glass. A hairsbreadth later and the light flared, revealing the plight of those who had cried out and the reason for their abject terror.

Like leaves before the breeze, the guards standing before him flew. _Literally_. One moment their feet graced the earth; the next, they crashed across the courtyard, scrabbling over each other as a strange and invisible force washed over them. They could not see it, nor could they touch it. Whatever it was, it was powerful. And it was merciless. They had only an instant to register the invisble hands seizing around their arms, their legs, their throats, and then they met their demise.

With a sickening squelch, two of the three guards were torn to pieces by these grasping hands of nothingness. Their entrails spattered across the yard, ground to gory smears across the grass as they imploded. The second dangled helplessly in midair, suspended by some unknown force. Frantically, he clawed at his throat, seeking to relieve himself of the inexorable noose that strangled his lungs and speckled black spots before his vision.

Abruptly he slumped, and joined his fellows on the floor. He stood there for a moment, admiring his handiwork. Then the powers of his cursed fruit turned themselves upon an altogether different target, one that had been cowering in the corner of the hall in the midst of the slaughter, blubbering fearfully to itself in fear. Now with a piggish squeal, it was wrenched free from its darkened corner and dragged into the light.

"No!" He shouted, clamoring for purchase upon the mossy rocks as the invisble force inexorably dragged him backward. "Stop! Please! I'll give you anything you want, anything at all! Please! Just don't kill me!" At that, the silent assaulted ceased, momentarily ebbing away into the air itself. The invisible telekinetic force that had been dragging the man to his doom still clung to him like a shroud; a predator, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.

His tormentor laughed; it was a deep, throaty sound.

_"Don't kill you?" _He asked aloud. He backhanded the Tenryubito. It was almost ridiculous. The fat swine practically flew from the force of the blow. He sprawled in the puddle and got up slowly, his hands and knees badly scrapped and bleeding from the impact. He made little whimpers in the swirling fog, and the man paid no heed as he stalked after him, heel shooting out from the fog to catch the tycoon between the ribs and stomach.

With a wheezing squeal, Saint Charloss was launched across the ruined hallway for a second flight.

"I have not yet decided on your fate just yet," The murder lowered his foot and curled one hand purposefully about the elongated hilt of a sword that had, until now, been held above the mantle of the hearth. Now, with a sundering shriek, he tore the greatsword free, simultaneously extinguishing the flames as the eerie mist settled about the room in a dark, smothering cloud. "But now that you mention it, I suppose I _do _owe you some thanks for the opening of my eyes." The blade's massive weight meant nothing to him and it came free with ease, much to everyone's disbelief. Dragging it behind him, the blond stepped one pace over a corpse, before his invisible energy decided to blow them away altogether.

With all of his guards either dead or dying, Charlosss skittered backward as the demonic blond trapsed after him. His tattered jacket swung open from his shoulders and blew wildly amidst the powerful gale created by the enstranged energy that did NOT belong to the wind. It seeped into his very soul, tainting his very life as the demonic blond did what most feared to even comprehend, and without hesitation.

Those strange rippling eyes saw through Saint Charloss and laid his every sin bare for judgement.

"W-What the hell are you!"

A maddened cackle came as his answerment.

"I am your judge, jury, and executioner."

Instead, he continued to drag the blade against stone, and allowed it to recreate that _horrible _screech of protest. With a slow and deliberate gait, he stalked across the sea of fallen corpses that lay between him and the sniveling buisinessman. And still, the blade grated against the gravel, leaving an eerie symphony of screams and other unnatural sounds in his wake. Those few who did not have the time or strength to clear away from him, were summarily cut down to death.

"Y-You! You cannot do this to me! Do you know who I am! If you so much as lay a finger on me I will summon an admiral-

"Just like you did for Luffy?" The blond snarled, his visage twisting furiously. "Good! If I kill three of you, that should bring all three, right?"

_"Eh?"_

**_"You're the third."_**

Then a different force gripped Charloss, one no less powerful than the first, but aimed at him, not anything else. It gripped Charloss cruelly about the throat and lifted him so his feet barely touched the ground from where he lay. He gawped openly, unable to understand what was happening, unable to comprehend, and desperately conflicted as to how to do so. The force gripped him even more tightly, closing his windpipe. Charloss choked, kicking out and finding nothing but the chair beneath him now. Forced to cease the assault, his verbal tirade silenced, his hands pulled at her throat, but there was nothing there to grip, and no way to fight it.

"N-NO!"

The blond flicked his wrist with contempt; there was a sharp crack, then the wet slapping ound of dead flesh hitting the floor. He didn't bother to watch he was already turning and making for what had once been the nearest wall.

Scarce had it done so than he was gone into the night.

"Luffy," He murrmured softly, starring upward into the stars. "Just you wait...I'll be there soon."

**A/N: Takes place directly before the Two Year time skip! Naruto's cursed fruit revolves around telikenises, in case you are all wondering. And how does Naruto know Luffy, you might ask? Well...its all part of the plan. Excuse the Heath Ledger reference there, but revel in the other ones! Naruto is very, very, very nasty toward any form of authority in this fic, particularly world Nobles.**

**Please review until my eyes fall out from reading. Although...being a skeleton...I HAVE NO EYES! YOHOHOHO! SKUUUUUUULL JOOOOOOKE!**


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